The Spangled Watery Monster that is: The Nun (2005)

The Nun (La Monja) (Spain, 2005)
rating: **1/2
starring:  Anita Briem, Belén Blanco, Manu Fullola

Again proving that nuns are something that God should had never planned out in the first place, this English language Spanish flick had us going through a familiar plotline involving a revenge seeking ghost nun killing off women who's somehow connected to her. By somehow I meant they killed her. Ain't a surprise. Ain't a spoiler. I've seen it miles away. I must be watching too much of these...

Eighteen years ago, a group of six preteens are terrorized in an all-girls Catholic School by a uber-strict nun who's mean of punishment includes making you eat paper or washing your groin with a shower head. Something happen some time later-*coughMURDER*cough- so we move to the present, as in 2005, young Eve, daughter of one of the girls, witnessed her mother got murdered by a levitating, semi-aquatic nun; cops didn't make out anything from it, and it was labeled as suicide, but after one of her mother's friends also got killed in an "accident' involving an elevator, she decided to join her friends' visit to Spain and try to see a likely explanation to why this is happening.

While in Spain, she met a cute priest-in-training who reluctantly helped her find another friend of her mother's, who just by luck also got murdered no sooner. In a race against time to save what's left of them, Eve had to go back to where it all started, and hopefully stop the nun before it's all too late.

Seems like a fair plot, and I'm happy to say that majority of the movie, tolerating the odd accent, The Nun played a cool and interesting supernatural slasher. The story was a familiar take on the dead person seeking revenge on victims kind of sorts, and given from the opening act, we already can tell these girls killed the terror nun. So being House on Sorority Row meets Darkness Falls, I was hoping to get some great cast here, unfortunately characters are utterly unlikable, not like they're jerks or anything, far from it, but I they're only talking paper cut-outs for me. So The Nun makes up for these with some strong gore effects, both CG and practical, worthwhile suspense scenes, beautiful camera work and some great killer ghost action; a good exchange but not enough.

The little flaws wasn't really that bad, one can easily overlook it, but this movie had done perhaps one of the biggest mess-ups I'd seen in terms of making plot twists, so bad that it kinda ruined everything that it was building to; you see, there was no killer nun.  It's all Eve. Or at least they try to make it look that way.

"Isn't that kinda like cheating?"
Yes, Mabel. yes it is...

Problem was is that it just doesn't add up for a number of reasons; given she has cut her mother's throat or crucified one of the victims, how did she then pulled off the elaborate elevator kill? Or the glass pane murder who's victim was pushed through from the other side of the door she was in? They even explained to us that a trauma may had triggered her killing spree, starting with her mum, which I'm open to accept if not for one dumb, little loophole: her mum's the second effin' victim. Another victim in London was killed days before said trauma was triggered, so if she's responsible for it all, how the eff did she even got all the way from Europe then back at America in just a few days?  My likeliest explanation for it all is possession, Eve's is the killer nun's host or something, but these guys are trying so hard to make their twist legit they even included flashbacks to back it up. I dunno, I try not to over-think this. It insults my intelligence.

Watching this movie could might as well be watching I know what you did Last Summer, only with a wet nun instead of a wet fisherman, a dumb try-hard twist that came out of nowhere in an attempt to top High Tension's, and oddly long for a slasher film. (101 Minutes. Ten minutes of that came from our cast explaining a lot of things we figured out on our own already) And yet, I'm giving it a pass for at least a fun 90 minutes before they ruined it. Now, please excuse me, I'm gonna watch some cartoons to mend and relax my brain...

Bodycount:
1 female throat cut with kitchen knife
1 female mentioned dead, burned
1 female arms crushed off on elevator
1 female found crucified
1 female drowned in bathtub (flashback)
1 female decapitated by broken window pane
1 male pushed to a broken
1 female burnt offscreen inside an oven
1 female impaled through with harpoon
total: 9